Top Moments of IGN SEA Exclusive Magic League Event

Cosplay, Family Bonding and Epic Looting.

By
Freddy Tan

There’s never been another weekend like this one. Hundreds of players around the Southeast Asia region joined together in Kuala Lumpur, to celebrate Magic: The Gathering (MTG). The IGN SEA Exclusive Magic League Event might not be the biggest MTG community event ever held in Malaysia; but it was certainly filled with exciting stories.

Even though the event was held on the same weekend with 2 other Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers (RPTQ), the response were great from both veterans and fresh bloods. The crowd were so diverse that you see fans, cosplayers, fathers and sons, boyfriends and girl friends, more than 12 nationalities all came to this magical event to play (for free), discuss and chill.

At the end of the event sponsored by Wizards of the Coast, more than 10,000 booster packs from the latest expansion - Amonkhet were given away, all in the name of embracing the game that binds us all.

Here are the top moments of IGN SEA Exclusive Magic League Event.

STARTING THEM YOUNG

As the event name suggested, the format was in the form of Magic League but restructured into a One-Day event.

At the age of 6, Izmir is the youngest participant of the event and he built a 30-card Blue-Black control deck with his initial 3 booster packs to deal with the fairly fast paced Amonkhet Limited meta.

Izmir (6) accompanied by his dad Sheik.

"I started playing magic on and off around 1992, and I recently got back into the game when my colleague introduced the Kaladesh set to me and Izmir", explained Sheik - the father of Izmir. Izmir liked it so much and he has been playing at home with Sheik for about 4 months.

Sheik is delighted that Izmir is highly interested in the game at such a young age and he is convinced that the trading card game will only do him good, from expanding his English vocabulary to thinking strategically.

"It's good for IGN and Wizards to organize and event like this... Izmir gets the opportunity to play with other adults in a casual and friendly environment" Sheik elaborated.

"My favorite colour in Magic is blue!". The boy's very good with numbers and very patient in holding removals. Looks like we got a young Jace here gearing up to be a great control player in the future.

If you can start them even younger, why not?

We spotted another potential young pyromancer, however, aside from fidgeting with his booster pack he didn't answer any of our questions.

SEA TRAVELERS

As with the usual Grand Prix, there were journeyers from all corners of the Southeast Asia region. From within Malaysia - Penang, Malacca, Johor Bahru to abroad - Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Iran, Thailand, Taiwan and so on, we had participants from over 12 different nationalities.

Team Philippines who will also be participating in the RPTQ the day after the event.

Several players from abroad took advantage of the schedule and traveled to Kuala Lumpur for both this event and the RPTQ happening the day after.

"It's exciting to see players from other countries participating in this community based event. I am very happy with the response", said Tse from Magic: The Gathering.

Meet the Italian Planeswalker from another familiar universe.

Aside from travelers within the SEA region, Enea Morbidelli showed up in the iconic Dragon Ball outfit and he was ready to have fun.

"I am a world traveler, I have been exploring different countries across the globe for many years!"

During his journey, Enea will always keep a look out for local MTG event and he is delighted to come across this event. Because you don't usually carry your cards around when you travel, Enea is delighted to participate in a limited event like this.

THE CROWD DELIVERS

There are two types of players at a MTG event, the ones who come to win and the ones who come for the experience. Evidently, with more than 450 planeswalkers playing in the event, we had a good mix of the two categories.

The crew explaining the rules and mechanism of the Magic League Event.

It was a wild weekend in Kuala Lumpur (with Amonkhet's heat), the crowd were spirited and cheerful across all 3 sessions from morning till late evening. We see players queuing up more than an hour to check-in before their session and there were a huge number of walk-in participants as the first two sessions were filled via online registration.

At the end of the session, players are required to report in at the registration counter with the scorecard to verify the final trial points and redeem more loots.

Nothing more exciting than having a DJ cracking the floor with Egyptian-inspired EDM.

FUN WITH THE COMMUNITY

Magic: the Gathering are a lot of things to a lot of players, and while the physical card is the tangible and most valuable aspect of the game, it's far from the only reason why people invest so much time and effort in MTG.

Human vs. Mummy, a daily occurrence in Amonkhet.

Just look at some of the best moments of the IGN Exclusive Magic League event captured on camera: